The United States can prevent millions from starving in 2023

The children’s names rarely make the news. They are the millions of kids in Somalia, Libya, Mali, Haiti, Afghanistan, Yemen and other poor nations who don’t have enough to eat. They were born into families that make less than $2.15 per person a day. Their plight has worsened as food prices around the world have soared because of global inflation, natural disasters and war.

The United States last year rallied other countries and wealthy families to ensure 160 million of the world’s neediest had enough to eat. The job needs doing again.

What sets the United States apart as a global leader is more than military might; it’s how this nation steps up in moments of global crisis, including times of hunger and famine. As Secretary of State Antony Blinken said this month, “The United States is the largest donor in the world to the U.N. World Food Program. We provide about 50% of its annual budget. Russia and China? Less than 1% each.”

This year brings another moment of crisis. Roughly 345 million people are in dire need of food aid, according to the U.N. World Food Program. That is virtually the same as the record set last year, yet funding has been slashed. There is no other way to say it: Millions will go hungry if the U.N. World Food Program does not get more funding. Its total budget for 2023 is $5 billion, the lowest since 2015 and less than half of the $14 billion the agency had last year as donors have become fatigued.

Some question why the United States sends money overseas to feed the world’s poorest when there are many needs at home. This is a false choice. Last year, the United States spent about $119 billion on the domestic food stamp program and gave about $7 billion to the U.N. World Food Program. This year, the United States has given the program just $2.1 billion, its smallest contribution in years.

There are reasons beyond a moral imperative to sustain high levels of foreign food aid. When people do not have enough to eat, they often flee to other nations or join extremist groups who lure them with promises of food and change.

This aid, particularly on an emergency basis, need not be a permanent international welfare program. In 1978, when that the Presidential Commission on World Hunger began, nearly half the world’s population lived in extreme poverty. Today about 10% do so. In addition to giving emergency food aid, the United States has also been increasing its investments in helping low-income nations become self-sufficient with improved farming techniques through a program called Feed the Future.

Congress faces many needs, but an extra $3 billion for global food aid would make a powerful statement, galvanize more giving and show the world why U.S. leadership is indispensable.